Safaricom  Ethiopia has announced that the number of M-Pesa users has nearly tripled in four months to 3.1 million with Sh18.5 billion transactions.

 Safaricom’s Ethiopia launched the mobile money service  last year on August 15 as part of the companies mission to help the country realise its digital potential and leverage technology to build a more prosperous society. 

 Safaricom chief executive officer peter Ndegwa said, “We are very pleased with the optimism that M-Pesa has evoked in the youthful population of Ethiopia, and we look forward with great excitement to the transformation M-Pesa will bring to financial inclusion in Ethiopia.”

According to the latest  update , Safaricom Telecommunications Ethiopia closed in December 2023 with 3.1 million M-Pesa users  which indicates that the  telco  has nearly tripled its mobile money customer base given that it had 1.2 million users at the end of September.

As the number of users  increased , the value of transactions also rose over six times to Sh18.5 billion from Sh3 billion at the close of September.

Active M-Pesa merchants increased  from 12,400 at the end of September to 43,100 at the end of December, while the volume of transactions more than quadrupled from two million to 9.2 million.

With the increased M-Pesa usage ,the Ethiopian unit got  Sh44.9 million as revenue in the period between mid-August and the end of December,  as the messaging service  earned the telco Sh28.2 million in nine months ended December.

Currently the telco is  interoperable with nine lenders including Commercial Bank of Ethiopia and Dashen Bank, Bank of Abyssinia, Awash International Bank, Co-operative Bank of Oromia, Abay Bank, Hibret Bank, Berhan Bank, and Bunna Bank for M-Pesa to bank transactions.

Safaricom has seen good traction in the Ethiopia business, with nine months to December subsidiary revenue coming in at Sh4.82 billion—nearly triple from the Sh1.68 billion earned in the financial year ended March 2023.

As at the end of December last year, the telco had 2,242 base stations, about 1,252 being own-built, covering 33 cities including large and medium towns. This represents 33 percent of population coverage.

Safaricom aims to intensify  connectivity to improve quality and win more customers. It  intends to inject  between Sh40 billion capital  and sH45 billion in the current financial year ending March 2024.